FEARLESS FIGHTERS is a 1971 wuxia epic clearly indebted to the likes of A TOUCH OF ZEN and DRAGON INN. It features a sprawling tableau of characters who spend the film forming alliances, betraying each other, and fighting. There's a heck of a lot of fighting, enough to fill the entire movie from beginning to end, and for a film shot in Taiwan this looks very impressive: colourful, sun-drenched, utilising a good quarry setting for many of the running battles, and with some bloody effects and weapon play too.The film was produced by the Sun Wah Motion Picture Company. IMDb has little info about them but they do a good job of rivalling the bigger Shaw Brothers studio here. I didn't recognise any of the cast and crew but nobody really puts a foot wrong. Some viewers may call for a little more story to go with the endless fight scenes, but I was happy enough to kick back and enjoy the above-average combat.Various plot ingredients include: a weird 'zombie style' of fighting; disabled fights; lost limbs; a villainous 'devil ripper' bladed weapon; poisoning; white haired masters; sword breaking; lost limbs; a whip fighter; lots of flying and impossible jumps; and various swords and containers shoved into the mouths of sinister henchmen. It's well shot throughout and while it might not be a classic, FEARLESS FIGHTERS is certainly an involved and entertaining film.

Maybe this flick in this style didn't get it's just do in the distribution network back in the day. If it had I am sure the above headline would not be written as it was ... this movie may have saved the genre! Today the style is revered by all who see and understand that 'fun-in-flick' no seriousness allowed kinda movie. Maybe a headline in Variety back in '72 would have stated: 'Flying Kung Fu With Women As Masters Too!' I didn't see any mistakes worth mentioning as the whole movie was a 'not-mistake' a phrase my high school students, who taught it to me will understand. The story was well spent on the screen in a currency rare indeed, the action was so massively overdone it seemed like the people who made it must have influenced the modern 'flying masters' of this era.

Even though when I buy a film like this I don't really expect good acting, story, or quality I buy them anyway just in case there is some good fighting / scenes in there. Unfortunately this one was a dud and a total waste of money. It is so bad that it is actually quite amusing in places so it gets a 2 out of 10. It is deffo frisby material but before you wang it out of the window it is worth one watch because you don't want to miss out on : What is going on with Bolo? The lead guy is a joke and is meant to be some kind of tough guy but looks like a mixture of Charles Bronson/Don Johnson/Columbo or whatever you cannot take this guy seriously.

That's the typical salad bowl martial arts movie from the early 70's, when hong kong low budget movies were the new wave in cheap entertainment. The acting is poor, yet not unwatchable. The white martial artist looks like a Miami vice ripoff Don Johnson ripoff ante litteram. Bolo makes his figure as a henchmen's leader playing two drug kingpins against one another. It gets scenes shot in Turkey, so it hadn't to be a really really low budget flick.The screenplay is a mess. You get drug kingpins & traffickers trying to cheat on their colleagues without a clear understanding of anything. You get lame subplots about romance. Many people run, like in the police thug telepictures, ex Inspector Bluey, etc.You watch it, and suddenly you can't make a difference between it, the many "American ninja" hotdog movies & hong kong rubbish.There is no Ninja in the movie, except for a fight scene where masked people overpower Bolo, who then just asks them who they are, and they take the mask off!!!Cheap VHS feed even during the cheap VHS boom of mid 80's.